Whenever someone asks me “Why would I want to develop my intuition?” I’m almost always baffled and don’t know what to say. It’s not because the question is invalid in some way — it’s a great question! — it’s just that for me my intuition is so much an ingrained part of my daily experience that I literally cannot imagine my life without it. In fact, without my intuition, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t even be alive today.

The amazing benefit of developing your intuition is that it can help you with any problem you can imagine. There are no limits to the types of questions or problems it can help you solve, or the kinds of goals it can help you realize. I spent years solving advanced math problems in elementary school without really knowing HOW I solved them. I was using my intuition, and I could often see or know the correct answer long before I could figure out how to prove the right answer. I’d have to work backwards from the answer I knew was correct to figure out how to solve the problem.

So, when I say there’s no limit to the types of problems your intuition can help you solve, I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating to put the intuition on some god-like pedestal, I’m telling you this because it’s what I’ve experienced in my own life.

The benefits of listening to and developing my intuition have been so numerous and so powerful that I wanted to share with you just my top ten. These are the ten that have had the greatest impact on my life and daily experience.

10. My Cat, Nadia

Nadia after a hard day of stealing my arcade tickets.

I saw a picture of Nadia in 2009 and KNEW she was going to be my cat. I found her on Petfinder at a local animal shelter, and she was an adult Russian Blue who was abandoned in a park by her previous owners. I didn’t make any plans to adopt her or even see her, but I kept coming back to her picture and looking at it almost every day. On 11/11/2009, I went with my boyfriend to make some visits to local shelters and animal care businesses. What do you know, but in the very first shop there was Nadia, sitting on the counter, looking like she was just waiting for me. According to the shop owner, she never sat on the counter, but had been doing so for the last couple days, as though she were waiting for someone.

9. Lie-dar

One of my intuitive gifts is that I am an empath. This means that when I’m around someone, I know what they’re feeling, because I feel it. This also means it’s pretty much impossible to successfully lie to me. When someone lies, his energy changes, and there’s a distinct energetic and emotional shift. A pulling in and my Lie-dar goes off.

I also know what type of lie I’m being told. I know whether you are telling me a lie of omission, a blatant lie, or whether you actually believe the lie you are telling. I know whether you are trying to spare my feelings or whether you are trying to avoid conflict.

This skill comes in handy almost everyday, and I love it.

8. An Exceptional Career

Thanks to my intuition (and a lot of hard work to develop it), I’m in a career I absolutely adore. I coach people on how to tap into and use their intuition for a passionate life. I used my intuition to create this career, considering I couldn’t find anyone who did what I do until after I started coaching people. All I knew is that nothing else felt right, and since I’ve spent quite a lot of time working on and developing my intuition, that’s all I needed to know to get started.

7. The Courage to Pursue My Dreams

This ties into my previous one, but it’s more far-reaching. When I experience doubts and uncertainty, I have my rock. My rock is my intuition. If I can bounce the idea off my intuitive knowing and get a positive answer or positive feedback, I know the course of action is right for me.

I can take the next steps on faith, because my intuition doesn’t steer me wrong. I may not end up where I think I’m going to end up, but it’s always been hugely helpful and beneficial to follow my intuition and I wouldn’t trade a single experience that I’ve had for anything.

6. The Name of a Supplement that I Needed

A lot of the gifts my intuition has given me lack specificity or concrete evidence of psychic phenomena, and I’m very comfortable with that. This one is different. I have a chronic illness called Addison’s Disease, and without going into a lot of elaborate detail, I don’t have adrenal glands. There are some unpleasant side effects to this disease, even when you take the proper medication as prescribed by an endocrinologist.

In March of 2010 I was doing a very intense healing meditation practice, where I repeated a mantra while in a deep meditative state for three hours a day. I wanted to see if self-healing was even possible, and I honestly believed it was out of the realm of possibility for me.

Apparently, I was wrong. About three weeks into it, I was in one of my hour-long sessions and my mantra disappeared and the name of a supplement started running through my head instead. For an hour, instead of my normal mantra, I heard “DHEA” repeated. To my knowledge, I had never encountered the name of the drug before, and as soon as I got out of the meditation, I looked it up.

It was a hormone that is produced by the adrenal glands, and for some reason, I had never heard of it! I immediately ordered a bottle from a trusted supplier, and the first few days I took it I had so much energy I couldn’t sleep.

To put this in perspective, previously I had to crash at eight or so, because my body would simply shut down. It refused to stay awake or to do anything other than sleep, and if I didn’t get my ass to bed, then I was going to pass out wherever I was.

I remember remarking to my partner that I didn’t understand how any normal person slept if they had this much energy. I was used to pushing myself very hard just to do “normal” things, and often needing to rest and sleep regardless of how much I pushed.

5. Taught Me How to Forgive

I wrote in a previous article about how my ex left me for another woman, and that I was able to go from that place to happiness in 30 days. When the breakup happened, I knew that I didn’t want to have that anger or resentment in my life.

My dreams were too important to let the experience hold me back, and so I asked myself and my intuition how I could heal quickly. The process I used was given to me through my intuition.

Some of the actions I knew to do immediately, like allowing the emotions to be, no matter what they were. My intuition led me to people who knew how to do the meditation part of it well, like Erin Pavlina, so I could truly forgive those who had hurt me. I wouldn’t be nearly as free as I am today if it were not for listening to my intuition.

4. Words of Encouragement in My Darkest Hours

I’ve mentioned my chronic illness, Addison’s Disease, earlier in this article. In 2004 I was very sick. I was so sick that leaving my studio apartment took tremendous effort every day, because I was so weak and sick and dizzy. I absolutely refused to see a doctor because a lot of the symptoms I had made me believe that it was in my head. I honestly believed I was crazy. I didn’t know how the intuition presented itself at that time, and I certainly didn’t know how to consciously tune in.

In 2004, when I was the most depressed and frustrated by my inability to do simple things, like go to work, and I was on the floor having panic attacks and other un-fun symptoms, I always heard these voices telling me things were going to get better. That this situation was temporary and that one day I would use this experience as a tool to help other people achieve their dreams.

Those words of encouragement were often the only things that kept me going, and helped me wake up every day and try to go to work again. To push myself past what I thought I could do, just a little further. Those words inspired me to be more.

3. Spirituality

I had a very unconventional childhood, but this started from one of the more conventional pieces of my childhood. Both of my parents were atheist when I was four or five, and I don’t recall ever hearing the word God until I was that age. I remember distinctly asking a neighbor what God was, and I remember feeling her shock that I had no idea what a god was, much less that it was a who.

I believe she had a toddler, and someone had mentioned God to prompt the question. I don’t remember her answer, but I do remember that it had something to do with a guiding force that lived in my heart, and that it was connected to love. I also remember knowing exactly who/what she was talking about. It was an “aha” moment for me, because I now had a name for the presence I felt with me.

I intuitively knew this God, and ever since then I’ve had a strong sense of spirituality.

2. I Know Who is “Right” for Me

One of the biggest gifts from recognizing and developing my intuition is that I know immediately who is “right” for me, in  romantic relationships, in business relationships and in friendships.  I feel pulled toward people who are perfect for me for now, and the ones who will help me grow the most. Almost every one of my deep friendships is due to an intuitive pull and subsequent action on my part. I am with my wonderful fiancé because I honored this pull.

1. The Vision that Saved My Life

I don’t know what more your intuition can do for you beyond saving your life, and I do believe that it saved my life. It was 2004 and I was 19 and living away from home. I had been experiencing weird symptoms, but had gone to the doctor once or twice and was told it was just stress. Some of the symptoms seemed psychological in nature, such as severe paranoia and panic attacks, and I feared that I had a mental illness.

Due to these symptoms and the extreme fatigue that I was experiencing, I had failed out of college 3 consecutive semesters. I was (and am) exceptionally stubborn, and didn’t want to relinquish my dream of a college degree while living away from home, so I continued to push myself as hard as I could.

To an outsider, it didn’t seem like much. I could only work between 10-20 hours a week for barely above minimum wage. Needless to say, this was not enough to pay rent AND eat. I had to choose one or the other, and I chose food.

About a month before I was evicted, I had a very vivid dream. I dreamt that I was in a hospital in a hospital gown, and I saw myself in a blue wheelchair with an IV stand next to me. I saw this from the top right corner of the room of the hospital, so I was seeing myself from a third-person point of view.

The striking part wasn’t the hospital or the gown or even the wheelchair, it was how HAPPY I was. I looked happy and energetic, and when I saw that image, all I felt was peace. I woke up with a start, and probably looked very bewildered. A friend had been staying at my place on and off while he got on his feet, and he was working at the computer when I woke up. He took one look at me and said, “You just had a premonition, didn’t you?” I thought I had, and a few months later it was confirmed.

I contracted pneumonia and ended up in the hospital. It was one weird thing after another that even got me INTO the hospital. The nurse took blood from the same arm that he was using to get me properly hydrated, and the blood work indicated that I had a bleeding ulcer.

The doctor immediately recommended that I get checked into a hospital, and recommended a different hospital and a specific doctor at that hospital. We checked in, they re-did the blood work only to discover that I had no bleeding ulcer, but the doctor knew something was VERY wrong. She knew I was in crisis and knew that I might die if she couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

The day the doctors properly diagnosed me I was wearing the hospital gown with the exact print on it that I had seen in my vision. I took a little “stroll” in the wheelchair I had seen, and I remember that morning waking up at 4 am with energy for the first time in years.

I don’t know I would have survived if it hadn’t been for that vision. I hated going to doctors, and if I had been admitted to the hospital, I likely would have spent a lot of time and energy stressing about what was wrong rather than letting my body do its best to heal and keep me alive.

What about you?

I don’t know how your intuition will guide you or lead you. I don’t know what problems you face, but I DO know that your intuition is your most powerful asset. Your intuition will help you live a life beyond imagination, if you let it. If you learn to listen, to hone in and to develop that trust.

Are you willing to live that bravely? That abundantly? If so, listen. What is your intuition guiding you to do now?

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